Big spike in users caused by Sorry, you do not have permission for that!

[Washerhelp]

Hi. On 6th April, my Google analytics showed a big spike in visitors to my forums. In fact, it highlighted this and said that I had received a lot more visitors than it had expected or predicted. Visitors had almost doubled overnight. The next day, numbers shot up again, the day after visitors had gone up by over six times normal numbers. Looking at my most visited pages, I can see that the second most visited page is, "Sorry, you do not have permission for that! "

I've never seen anything like this before. Have you any idea what could be behind this?

Edited April 12, 2023 by Washerhelp

[Randy Calvert]

Someone is trying to access content they don’t have access to. Do you have forums that are only accessible to members and not guests?  If so, someone may have shared something that is available to them logged in but that is not available to a guest. 

[Washerhelp]

Hello Randy. Thank you for your reply. Everyone can view all of the forums, and all posts including guests. Guests aren't allowed to reply, or start topics. But it's always been like that, and this strange thing only started several days ago.

I've just found the following in the system error logs, which must be the culprit as they started on the same day. Any idea what is going on please? I don't have anything set to automatically upgrade.

 

06/04/23 11:13     auto_upgrade     LogicException (0) Email address or password incorrect. Make sure you are providing the details that you use to log int...     

06/04/23 11:11     auto_upgrade     LogicException (0) Email address or password incorrect. Make sure you are providing the details that you use to log int...     

06/04/23 11:10     auto_upgrade     LogicException (0) Email address or password incorrect. Make sure you are providing the details that you use to log int...     

21/03/23 11:14     uncaught_exception     OutOfRangeException: (0) #0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/cms...

Edited April 12, 2023 by Washerhelp

[Randy Calvert]

3 minutes ago, Washerhelp said:

06/04/23 11:13     auto_upgrade     LogicException (0) Email address or password incorrect. Make sure you are providing the details that you use to log int...   

You attempted to upgrade IPB on that day. When you ran the upgrader from within the ACP, you had the wrong credentials entered for you client area. 

“auto” means you simply did it from the AdminCP instead of manually downloading the files from the client area, uploading them to your site, then running domain.com/admin/upgrade to do the upgrade. 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Randy Calvert

[Washerhelp]

Hi Randy. Thank you for that. I do remember that, but then I put the correct details in, and the upgrade carried out successfully. I'm currently running version 4.7.9. So that's very strange, they are the only errors showing, and they are on the day that I upgraded the forums to the latest version. But it doesn't really explain any spike in page views.

Page views have gone from between 4 and 500 a day to 1,459 on the 6th. Then 3,000 the next day, then 3,628 and has stayed in the 3,000s. The Sorry, you do not have permission for that! page has been viewed 1,700 times in the last week and is the second most viewed page on there.

Is there any way to find out why the page is being refused and what page? It couldn't possibly be caused by me entering wrong Client area password when upgrading unless it's set off some weird reaction?

[Randy Calvert]

Just now, Washerhelp said:

Is there any way to find out why the page is being refused and what page?

That’s something you have to figure out in GA. They should be able to give you the URL instead of the page title.  Literally ANY page could have that title if someone does not have access to it. 

2 minutes ago, Washerhelp said:

It couldn't possibly be caused by me entering wrong Client area password when upgrading unless it's set off some weird reaction?

Unrelated. You were looking for errors in the log, but you entering a wrong password would not generate that problem. 

[Washerhelp]

Thanks Randy. Unfortunately I can't see any URLs on Google analytics in the section that reports this.

There aren't any pages on my website that people don't have access to, other than obviously an admin login for example. There wouldn't be any errors if a guest tried to view any pages as Invision just does not show, "reply to topic", or "post new topic to guests" who are not allowed to do so.

It's hard not to suspect some sort of book when this has only happened after I upgraded to the latest version, though I appreciate that I'm the only one (at least so far) that has noticed this. There must be some way to find out what people are trying to access that they do not have permission for, especially when you have a massive spike like this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Randy Calvert]

I did a quick search on Google there looks to be ways of getting URLs from GA. You might want to search this more.  We can’t help with that here obviously but that hopefully points you in a better direction. 
 

 

[Marc]

 The error being on the same day will simply be coincidental there. The reality is, someone or something has simply tried to access your site over an over. It could well be anything from a bot, to someone intentionally trying to hit a page to get in, to just general traffic because a link has been added somewhere that is busy. Trying what Randy suggested above would be the best way to find out, but at times, spikes will happen

[Washerhelp]

Thanks Marc. I will try to get more information, though it was only a spike the first day. After 6 consecutive days it seems like something different. 
 

 

[Randy Calvert]

10 minutes ago, Washerhelp said:

Thanks Marc. I will try to get more information, though it was only a spike the first day. After 6 consecutive days it seems like something different. 
 

I had a topic that got shared by a member on social media by an influencer.  It ended up getting a bunch of traffic for several days before it died back down.  I've also seen something get popular on Google also.  There was a thread started about a TV show and there was something that happened where a scene on that show went viral.  We suddenly had a TON of traffic come in from Google itself as people were searching for that show for about 3-4 days.  

It sounds like you may have possibly had a "viral spike".  

[Washerhelp]

Hi Randy, yes that's what I initially thought until I saw the "Sorry, you do not have permission for that!" was the second largest page viewed in the last 28 days.

From the last 12 months up until 5 April, the "sorry" page is at position 163, with 127 views by 97 members. But if I just look at figures for 6th April to today (6 days) then the sorry page is number 2 with 1,688 views by 1,688 members.

I immediately assumed that this page is what has caused the spike, but thinking about it, as page views have gone up from 500 to about 3000 this page doesn't really account for all of the spike - but is at least a large part of it.

Could you tell me what kind of page could bring up the "Sorry, you do not have permission for that!"? I've never come across it in 20 years of running forums. I can also only find one mention of it on Google.

It can't be a link from a popular source, because anyone can view any page. Even if a link had a mistyped URL people would get a,"sorry we couldn't find that page". If someone was trying to log it they would get a wrong password error etc.

So I'm struggling to think what could be generating this error page so relentlessly for six days solid.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Washerhelp

[Marc]

Unless you can get the URL, or its showing in your error logs, there is no way in which we would be able to advise you properly on that.  You need to obtain the URL visited from google.

[Randy Calvert]

2 hours ago, Washerhelp said:

Hi Randy, yes that's what I initially thought until I saw the "Sorry, you do not have permission for that!" was the second largest page viewed in the last 28 days.

Remember.... that could also be multiple pages.  

If you have a crawler for example hit 500 different pages each with the same title of "Sorry", it's going to sum it up as one "page". 

[Washerhelp]

Hi. I couldn't get the YouTube advice to work because his setup is different to mine and I didn't have the options that he suggested. However, I have done a lot more research and digging. One puzzle is solved, and that is that I couldn't understand what this page was because I couldn't find it anywhere.

But through experimentation I found that when browsing as a guest, certain links bring up an error page stating -

The page you are trying to access is not available to guests, but may be available if you sign in.

But viewing the source markup of this page reveals that its title is

<title>Sorry, you do not have permission for that!</title>

I'm still completely puzzled as to how my page views have suddenly just shot up but at least the 1,700 page views of the "Sorry, you do not have permission for that!" Page making it rank at number two could be explained by guests (and presumably bots) will all generate this page if they click on the following links which are on my main menu -

/forums/leaderboard/ "Find content" link

/forums/topmembers/  "Find content" link

/forums/discover/unread/ "unread content" link

There is no option under permissions for guests to allow them to view this content. I don't understand why they can't by default, it seems harmless enough. So is there a way to allow guests to view this content?

Should I not have these links in my main menu? Though it is an option to do this so it seems strange that the system allows these links to be created when they will only generate hundreds of thousands of error pages for nonmembers.

Many thanks for your continued support in this.

[Marc]

I would suggestion checking these at a module level, as you have removed permission for them at some point. By default guests can see the top 2 of those (the latter would make no sense, as they dont have unread items, as they are guests)

https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/how-to-use-ips-community-suite/managing-members/member-permissions-r305/

[Washerhelp]

Many thanks Marc. I've just been through the settings in applications. I found that guests were not allowed to access profiles. After adding permission for guests, I can now view the following when not logged in

•  /forums/leaderboard/ "Find content" link
• /forums/topmembers/  "Find content" link

But the link for /forums/discover/unread/ still brings up the same error. I looked at where the settings are for this under the menu manager. The unread content section was set to "I want to choose which groups can see this item" but guests was already ticked. So I instead ticked the, "Show this item to users who can access its content" option which made no difference. I even tried going back to setting individual permissions, selecting "non" and saving, and then re-selecting "All" including guests. But nothing works.

Clicking, Activity/Unread content still brings up "You do not have permission to view this stream" (Error code: 2C280/3) for guests.

 

 

[Marc]

As mentioned in the above, unread content would not be visible to guests, as guests do not have unread content

[Washerhelp]

Hello Marc. Unread content is visible to guests on my forum, and clicking on it when not logged in produces the permission error page. In my main menu I have "Activity". This link, when hovered over, shows the following links -

All Activity - Online Users - Unread Content - Search

This menu is shown to all users, and any not logged in clicking the unread content get the Sorry, you do not have permission for that! page. Obviously, I can fix this by removing that section from the main menu. But I don't understand why it does this when, in the menu manager, "Unread Content", is definitely set to allow guests to view it.

[Marc]

I feel you may be missing what I mean here. By very definition, guests cannot have unread content. As they are not members

[Washerhelp]

Yes I fully understand that, so I’m wondering why do guests see that link that they aren’t allowed to view, and why is it an option in Menu Manager to allow guests to see unread content?

 

[Marc]

Please update your access details on file, and I can then take a look to see what you have there

[Washerhelp]

Thanks. I’m out at the moment but have a look at the main menus Under Activity

https://www.washerhelp.co.uk/forums/forum/39-uk-washing-machine-repair-questions/

[Marc]

I can certainly have a look at those once you are able to update access details

[Washerhelp]

There’s nothing to see really. Just menu manager with the option to let guests see unread content. It should be same in any invision as it’s part of it.